Energy: ENEA and Fratello Sole strengthen collaboration to tackle energy poverty

ENEA and Fratello Sole, a non-profit consortium company active in energy efficiency interventions and services and the development of energy communities for non-profit organizations, renewed their partnership to combat energy poverty, particularly through support to the Third Sector and religious insitutions.

For the next five years the collaboration will work on implementing new projects dedicated to training social enterprises in the green job sector. The objectives include a revision of the Sustainability Guidelines for Third Sector Bodies - Energy and Water, on the basis of regulatory updates and to introduce Energy Communities, new European projects for innovation and fight energy poverty. ENEA and Fratello Sole will implement concrete actions aimed at creating the conditions for an energy transition of religious institutions and third sector bodies that produce social value, participation and inclusion of the most vulnerable people, especially in the most disadvantaged areas.

 “ENEA is committed to ensure that the principles of sustainability and Just Transition are applied in the energy transition process. In this context, the partnership with Fratello Sole is crucial. By renewing our collaboration, we will strengthen the initiatives to combat energy poverty, which is causing concern due to the high share of energy-poor households and wide gaps between citizens’categories. In fact, our data show that large families in rented accommodation and the presence of inactive, unemployed or fragile people or of other nationalities, register a higher incidence of energy poverty than the average", pointed out ENEA President Gilberto Dialuce.

 “Social services and activities are put at risk by soaring energy prices” said Fabio Gerosa, president of Fratello Sole. “Energy poverty affects non-profit organizations as well as families. The agreement with ENEA allows us to renew our common commitment to help the Third Sector, which, after the pandemic and with the energy crisis, requires a stronger effort to walk on the path to sustainability and efficient use of resources, starting with energy. Today energy is the key to peace and not just environmental sustainability, it means creating a social impact that our institutions implement on the territory by supporting vulnerable people. This is why the relationship and projects with ENEA have had a real impact in recent years and hopefully for the next five years."

The first agreement between ENEA and Fratello Sole, signed in 2018, made it possible to carry out actions to help non-profit organizations (associations, foundations, cooperatives, religious institutions, mutual societies and social enterprises) to renovate the buildings where education, social-health, research, training services are imparted, where vulnerable people live or where production processes are carried out by workers belonging to the weakest groups. Specifically, the main initiatives implemented in the first five years of collaboration include:

awareness-raising actions addressed to national institutions, which successfully led to the implementation of the first national measure that combines the Third Sector with the energy transition, with the modification of Title VI, Fiscal measures - Art.119 - "Incentives for energy efficiency, earthquake bonus, photovoltaic and electric vehicle charging stations”;

guidelines for the sustainability of Third Sector bodies - Energy and Water, also designed and implemented with the support of the AMGA Foundation, launched in November 2021 and presented during a national tour with Banca Etica. The document was downloaded 200 times from the Fratello Sole website and over 300 paper copies were distributed;

European Erasmus+ project "Greenability", which compared the different ways of tackling energy poverty in Europe and created two toolkits for social workers to support institutions and families, and ended with an event in Milan with the Order of Engineers to raise awareness among industry professionals;

Horizon 2020 European project "SER_Social Energy Renovations", which made it possible to create, for example, the SERvice4Impact tool for planners, for a preliminary assessment of Third Sector buildings. To date, more than 700 downloads of this tool have been made which will make it possible to collect considerable data on energy efficiency in the Third Sector, to study its features and needs;

seminars and conferences on the national territory dedicated to the energy transition of the Third Sector, including the 'Good&Green' event with Caritas Rome in 2019.